Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (26 page)

Yes!
Tugging, she felt the rope give. She worked in another finger
and then a third, and felt the knot suddenly relax as the ropes parted
in her hands.
All right, come on!
Grasping a single rope, she hauled
straight down as hard as she could, let her weight drop, grunting as
her wounded calf screamed—and heard a hollow
bong
.
Hurry, please, hurry!
She sent the thought winging after each
bongdong
,
bong-dong
of the bell.
Hurry, hurry, help us, help us, help us!

“Come on!” Storming down the village steps, Greg dashed to his
horse and yanked his Bushmaster from its scabbard. He was already
spinning away as the village hall doors popped open and Aidan spilled
out, shouting over the
dong-bong
of the bell, “What the
hell
?”

Greg sprinted for the church, only a hundred yards away, with
Pru hard on his heels. Now that the bell was ringing—now that he
knew something was wrong—he could hear the dogs, too: very faint,
but unmistakable, a rhythmic
oof-oof-oof
floating from the rear of the
church. The dogs and kids must be in the school; God, he hoped so.
Which meant Tori and Sarah were in the bell tower.

Or it might be only one of them.
Instead of bounding up the front
steps, he turned, saw Aidan, Lucian, and now Jarvis and two of the
village guards running after, and shouted back: “The kids! Go make
sure the kids . . . !” Then, pivoting, he blasted past the church’s front
entrance, dodged right, and headed around back, slipping into slate
shadows painted on snow by the coming night.

“Side door?” To his left, he could hear Pru’s ragged breaths.
“Thought . . . Tori locked it. Where . . . the hell . . . are Cutter and
Benton?”

“Don’t know.” He was sure Tori locked up after he’d left, too.
What was in the church that anyone would want?
Food, mostly. Not a
lot, but easier to get to than the jail.
Suddenly, his boots skated on something slick. He landed with a
splish
in a mucky, slithery tangle that
reeked of salty metal and the fouler, rank odor of guts.

“Guh.”
Pru sounded as if he was going to be as sick as Greg felt.
“Oh, fuck me.”
“God.” Greg’s voice was thick with sour puke. He spat. In the bad
light, Greg couldn’t see if he was wallowing in Cutter or Benton.
Didn’t much matter. From the size of the puddle and spools of chilled
intestines, most of the body—or bodies—was elsewhere. He swam
forward, leaving a snail’s slick of gore, then got a knee under as Pru
dragged him upright.
“Jesus.” Pru pressed a hand to his forehead like a kid taking his
fever. “A Changed?”
“Maybe more than one.” The bell was still tolling. Greg could feel
the dry air wicking the wet from his face and chest, leaving behind
a tacky, toxic sludge of half-congealed blood and ruptured guts.
“Whatever. I’m going inside.”
“Are you nuts?” Pru’s hand shot for Greg’s arm. “What’s gone
down has gone down.”
“Stay here if you want.” Greg tore himself free. “I don’t care what
you do, but Tori’s in there, and Sarah, and I’m
going
.”
“No.”
Pru tried another grab but missed. “Greg, be smart. Chris
or Peter wouldn’t—”
“
Fuck
smart,” he said. “And that just shows what you
don’t
know,
because
they
would, and so will I.”
Turning, he dashed the last hundred feet. The door was open, not
yawning but wide enough for him to scuttle through with room to
spare. He held his breath as he did it, expecting the shot. None came,
and he heard the air sigh from his mouth. As soon as he was inside,
the bell’s clanging diminished. Directly ahead and up a short but very
steep flight of stairs, he made out the arched entryway into the sanctuary. Enough of the day’s dying light splashed in through the open
door for him to see a stack of folding chairs leaning against the wall
to his right. This was bad because it meant that he could be seen if
someone was on the altar platform, maybe waiting out of his line of
sight.
If anyone’s still in here.
When the bells started, the smart thing for
the Changed would be to get out, fast, just as the wiser play for Greg
would have been to wait, like Pru said. He hoped the Changed were
smarter than he was. He’d been here only a couple of hours before
and remembered the layout: that the stairs to the basement were on
his right. He peeked, saw the door was open, and thought,
Oh boy,
that’s bad.
With no flashlight, it would be crazy to go down—
He heard something shuffle off his left shoulder, tensed, swiveled,
socked the Bushmaster in place, then felt a surge of relief. “I thought
this wasn’t smart.”
“Yeah, so we’re both stupid. Now wha—” Pru’s voice died as he
saw the gaping maw of the basement door. “Shit. Block it?”
The door opened out, so that should work. “I’ll do it,” he murmured. He didn’t want to let go of his gun, but he couldn’t do this
with one hand. He laid the Bushmaster flat, then gently pulled one
folding chair away from the other ten, the metal letting out a faint,
rasping
scaw
that made him wince. Slowly padding down the steps,
he levered the door closed, all his muscles trying to turn to jelly at
every creak and squeak, and wedged the chair under the knob. He
repeated this maneuver twice more, moving as fast as he could. Total
time: maybe a minute.
“Good deal. Anything in there’ll be trapped like a bug in a jar. You
remember the layout?” Pru chinned toward the sanctuary. “Sundays,
I try to sleep with my eyes open.”
“Three steps and you’re on the platform. Choir on the right, altar
on the left along the wall and under the cross. Pulpit at one o’clock on
the far end. Go straight through and you’ll be in the organist’s pit.”
He thought. “I’ll go right, down the side aisle. Depending on what
happens next, you head for the platform.”
Pru nodded, and Greg took the stairs as fast as he dared. He saw
the cross suddenly slip into view on his left and then the high arches
of stained glass lining the sanctuary’s far wall; heard a sudden creak
under his boot and thought,
Shit, in the movies they hug the wall, so
stairs won’t
—
There was a thundering roar, a clap of lightning. Greg let out a
startled gasp as the wall above his head suddenly cratered. Swaying,
he stumbled back, tripped over his boots, and fell the rest of the way
as another shot blasted past. Greg felt the
whir
of a slug cleave air by
his left temple.
“Shit.”
Pru’s face swam into view. “You hit?”
“No.” His left ear felt as if someone had crammed in a fistful of
cotton, but he could hear the
tick-tick-tick
of buckshot and the lighter
patter of grit and pulverized drywall. Well, at least they knew what
kind of weapon the Changed had. Eyeing the hole in the drywall,
Greg saw the teardrop shape and how it curved
up
. “I think he’s under
the altar table.”
“Yeah?
And?
” Pru sounded angry. “How the
hell
are we supposed
to . . . wait, Greg, why are you taking off your boots?”
Giving him something else to look at.
Quickly yanking off his other
boot, Greg stripped the sock, then crammed both socks into a parka
pocket. Hefting the boot in his left hand, Greg glanced back at Pru.
“He’s got a shotgun.”
“So?” Pru gave him a strange look and then Greg saw the second
his friend got his meaning. A shotgun had a max effective distance of
about forty yards. Plenty of stopping power, but if he could get far
enough away, his rifle, or Pru’s Mini-14, would be much more effective. Pru jerked a nod. “Okay,” Pru said. “Just . . . run
fast.
”
I hear that.
Greg pulled in a breath.
Oh God, please make this work.
Then he stopped thinking and moved. Dashing up the steps, Greg
lobbed the boot in an awkward throw and then immediately dodged
right. The shotgun roared at the same instant, following the trajectory of his boot. Through the ringing, he heard Pru squeeze off a
shot as Greg hit the stone floor in a hard thump. The shotgun thundered to life again. This time, the pew just above his head exploded
in a mushroom cloud of wood splinters. Ducking, Greg threw up a
hand to protect his head and neck as he scuttled as fast as he could
down the side aisle. Behind, he caught the sharp
crack-crack-crack
, the
Ruger’s raps growing closer and louder as Pru stormed up the steps.
Wheeling to his left, still hunched over, Greg dashed the cramped
length of the pew, bare feet slapping stone, the center aisle dead
ahead.
At that moment, the bell cut out.
The others are in. They’re safe.
He
felt a sting in his throat, gulped it back.
Tori’s safe.
From the altar to his left, he heard something shrill—a shout, a
scream
?—and then he was lifting onto the balls of his feet, pivoting,
thighs tensing, his Bushmaster swinging clear of the pew, thinking,
Aim up.
But he never had a chance to take the shot.

In the sudden thrumming silence, Greg saw Pru looming over the
writhing body of a boy. When he’d been shot—a belly wound from
the way the Changed was curled in a comma—the boy had tried rolling away, because once Greg squirted past, the Changed needed to
move, fast, or end up full of holes. But the kid couldn’t move fast or
far enough to outrun Pru’s bullets, and Greg saw why.

A forked splinter of bone jutted from a juicy rip in the boy’s thigh.
Now that Greg was standing, he saw the trail of blood smeared over
the sanctuary’s floor and up the altar platform’s steps. The altar carpet
was purple and sodden.
Dragged himself all the way.
Turning, Greg followed the blood trail’s wavering path and realized that the boy must’ve
broken his leg outside the sanctuary. Maybe in the vestibule, or even
the breezeway. But how? That kid would’ve had to fall pretty far.

Through the sanctuary’s thick double doors, he could hear a growing gabble and maybe . . . was that a scream? Couldn’t tell. Way back,
he’d read that you lost some of your hearing if you shot at a range
and didn’t wear gear. Keep this up, he’d be deaf by the time he was
twenty. His ears still buzzed so badly he couldn’t tell or tease apart
the muted sounds seeping through the doors. No gunshots, though,
so that was good. As desperately as he wanted to burst through those
doors and find Tori, he knew he ought to wait. No rush now. The
girls were safe.

We did it.
So why didn’t he feel good about that? It was the Changed
boy, the screw of his face, the way he writhed.
Dying hard,
Kincaid
would say. Not right to feel good about that. He started back for Pru.
“You okay?” He thought he said it too loudly.

“Yeah. Can’t say the same for our buddy.” Pru toed a shotgun away
from the boy’s spidering fingers. “Can’t decide whether to finish him
or let him bleed to death.” He paused. “Dude’s pretty messed up.
Carpet’s ruined. So’s the altar cloth.”

Greg picked out splashes of blood on the wood, even the walls
just below the cross. If you didn’t know better, you’d think Jesus’s
ghost was up there, dripping. He stared down at the boy. Seventeen,
eighteen, he guessed, greasy hair down past his shoulders and a ton
of yellow pus balloons and zit scars to boot. Someone had rearranged
his nose, too, and recently. The boy’s skin was the color of moldy
cheese, and his eyes, already glazing, were sunk deep in sockets
rimmed with fading yellowish bruises. This Changed was starving to
death, just like them
.

Stooping, he reached for the shotgun—and froze. He must also
have . . . what . . . gasped? Cried out? He didn’t know, but Pru said,
sharply, “
What?
Greg?”

No.
Maybe his heart had stopped somewhere along the way. He
thought that must be it, because he felt the muscle seize in his chest
and his center go cold and still and black. For a crazy instant, he
thought,
This will be what it’s like when I’m dead.
He watched his hand
float toward the weapon; saw his fingers—small, so distant—wrap
themselves around the shotgun’s walnut stock, then creep over the
ridges and swirls of those intricate curlicues of carved flowers and
vines as a blind boy reads Braille.

“Oh Jesus,” Pru said. Then: “Greg, look at me, man. This doesn’t
mean anything—”
But he was on his feet, backtracking a stumbling step and then
another, and now he’d gotten himself turned around and had begun
to run, the Changed’s blood sticky against his bare feet, and then the
sanctuary’s double doors were suddenly swinging wide, as if in a bellow, because now the voices all crashed through in a huge wave that
the men rode, spilling into the sanctuary. The faces blurred—all black
mouths, black eyes—and now hands were floating to meet him like
exotic sea life on an incoming tide.
Of them all, he recognized only three people in those first few
seconds: Sarah, hair wild, face smeared with blood; Yeager, somehow
pathetic in a red-checked flannel he hadn’t managed to button correctly; and Kincaid, who crowded through, with his arms out to grab
him, hold him back, spare him for one more second: “No, son. Don’t
look, don’t look, son, don’t . . .”
“
Nooo!
Tori?
Tori?
” Greg wailed as Kincaid wrapped him up, and
then there were more hands and other men bearing him to the cold
stone as Greg thrashed.
“No no no!”

And in all of that, there was one thing more: the moment doddering
old Henry stumped up the altar to stare down at the Changed boy,
who was, miraculously, still alive.

“What?” At first, Greg wasn’t sure the voice, so dead and flat, was his.
Still huddled in the circle of Kincaid’s arms on cold, blood-smeared
stone, Greg felt eight years old again, a little boy waiting for the adults
to make everything all right, and he had never missed his father quite
so much. “Stiemke? Like on the
Council
?”